REVIEW: Spirit World #5 (of 6)

Spirit World #5, continues the story of Xanthe Zhou, John Constantine, and Cassandra Cain aka Batgirl, as they make their way to the Jade Tower, an alternate plane of existence where a court of deities decides who gets to reincarnate.

The writing by Alyssa Wong is good when it comes to the major strokes of the plot, the character development, the drama, and the action. However, it falls a little flat with the constant need to have the character Xanthe Zhou, explain everything that is happening to the reader. Even though this is the first issue I read from this series, right from the first few pages I was pretty caught up with what was going on. I understood who the court was, what they were all about, and where the main characters were going. That being said, a few pages later we have some needless explanation of the court that is masked as a description to the other characters but honestly, it just feels weird, John Constantine is THE BEST SORCERER in the DC WORLD, and yet here we have Xanthe explain to him what the Jade court is like he wouldn’t read it somewhere else before. It’s a little weird, this sort of over-explaining by the main character happens a few too many times for my liking, and perhaps if this series was aimed at children, which is unlikely find as any story featuring John Constantine is hardly a story for children, then maybe it makes sense to repeat the obvious for the younger readers. However, this does not really make it a bad story or a bad comic, because honestly in many places it is really good.

The art is phenomenal like crazy good! The character designs are fantastic! Everyone in this comic looks amazing! The diverse cast of characters and the Jade Court members all look awesome, the main characters, the big bad villain, just everyone looks astonishing! Haining is a fantastic artist and aided by the beautiful coloring of Sebastian Cheng. This story is visually one for the ages. I personally would’ve liked a couple more full-page action illustrations to go in this issue, but I was happy to just marvel at the fantastic character designs that it holds. There is a character with two snake heads, a gold skeleton general, and a spider queen villain that looks inspired by Lolth the Spider Queen. There are several Japanese and samurai aesthetical elements that make this a fantastic story with the cultural influences of their creators. The color palette at first glance looks to be all over the place because of all the different characters and their different color schemes, but you quickly realize that there is a jade and purple color thread tying everything together and delivering a rather unified look to the story.

The lettering is also very good; there is one instance where I think the word balloon tail is pointing in the wrong direction, but other than that is stellar. There is no shortage of creative sound FX’s design and placement. The fonts used are very good for thought balloons, speech bubbles, and caption boxes. Where it was a little off was at the beginning two pages with the location titles and the names of the Jade Court members. I think it would’ve been better if they went with a standard location box and gave the members their own font or overall made the text stand out against the highly detailed and visually complex art.

There are a lot of elements that I liked about this comic. I am a sucker for magic-related stories and this one is full of them. However, it is possibly not the strongest entry into the series. Whilst there is a lot of good stuff happening with the spider villain and the Jade Court, the A-plot was rather boring. It features Xanthe, John and Cassandra being controlled by an unknown entity and having to battle against each other, whilst Xanthe figures out a way to fix the issue and get her friends and teammates back. The reason I think it’s a little boring is because it feels like there aren’t any stakes to that battle, right from the get-go you feel like John and Cassandra are kind of holding their strength back, and while in narratively makes sense because they aren’t fully being controlled it also just feels like Xanthe is not at all in danger. Couple that with the fact that she’s the one explaining everything in extra detail, and it feels like Xanthe is incapable of being harmed because if she did die or get truly hurt, then who would tell the reader what is going on? Little weird things like that jumped up at me while reading this and it made me not enjoy the story fully. There were however some cool moments, like how she turned a little piece of paper into a parachute that could hold her weight or how she materialized a badass sword out of thin air to protect herself from Batgirl. The way she fixed the issue was a little too simple in my opinion and I would’ve liked to have seen it backfire or perhaps not work at all first, and then work, just to give the story a little more tension and not have it feel like Xanthe is going to be safe all the time.

Overall, it’s an alright story, visually it is stunning, and the script is good. The big points are good, and I am sure that this series will gain more traction as it continues forward as well as hopefully lose its main character explains everything twice syndrome. I think it’s unnecessary to have the character re-state what is happening when visually we are already seeing and hearing it. Alyssa Wong did a fantastic job at setting the scene of the issue in the first 4 pages but having to explain again just felt superfluous. I am a fan of John and the magick arts, so i will still be looking forward to reading the next issues because I want to see what else is in store for these characters, and hopefully see Xanthe really struggle with her abilities, because right now she feels as powerful as John and she shouldn’t be.

Writing: 4 Stars
Art: 5 Stars
Colors: 5 Stars

Overall: 4 Stars

Written by: Alyssa Wong
Art by: Haining
Coloring by: Sebastian Cheng
Lettering by: Setve Wands
Cover art by: Haining & Cheng
Variant Covers by; Jessica Lui Fong
Published by DC Comics

Reviewed by Antonio “Mabs”